SCUBA divers at depths of 30 metres can suffer
nitrogen narcosis - a drunken feeling which causes them to offer their air hoses to fish or make them want to smoke!
The arguments pivoting on these points form much of the dialogue in this heavy volume, and there is a dreariness to the narrative as the same accusations are repeated by the presiding judge over and over again until the reader is bludgeoned into a kind of
nitrogen narcosis -- similar probably to the state of mind into which the writers were driven by the inanity of the repetitions and the hairsplitting definitions of what constituted nationalism.
In 1872 he too was felled, by
nitrogen narcosis, or the bends, the result of too much time spent in the underground caissons built to sink the massive foundations of the bridge towers.
But, with increasing pressure underwater, it can create an intoxicating effect called
nitrogen narcosis that can endanger even the most experienced divers.
To the unfamiliar, or those with
nitrogen narcosis, it may seem clownlike.